Treat yourself and loved ones this holiday season with more gift ideas from DEV! This guide is themed to offer up supportive gifts for coders, because everyone can benefit from tools that promote healthy habits.
Support your Body
Self-care is crucial to writing clean code. What happens outside the computer is just as important as what happens inside. Despite your experience, poor posture or inadequate sleep can hinder your programming experience worse than any malware could.
Good posture can improve circulation and make you more efficient. It can also help you avoid fatigue, or worse - burnout. If you know a dev that is working away at a desk, maybe think about picking up some back support or a footrest. The chair you sit in has a measurable impact on your work. If you’re looking for a larger gift to give, upgrading your loved one’s chair for them would earn you a great deal of thanks.
Everyone has heard of the dangers of working with your laptop on your lap. Not only is it bad for the alignment of your spine, laptops also have a tendency to get hot under a heavier workload. Although the threat of actually burning yourself with your laptop is likely low, it could help to invest in a laptop stand. Keeping your laptop’s internal heat down is better for the components and will help them to last.
Support your Mind
If you’re looking for more practical advice, we recently published a book called Your First Year in Code.
The ebook comes with practical advice on topics like code reviews, resume writing, fitting in, ethics, and finding your dream job. You can buy it on LeanPub on a pay-what-you-can model. Check out Ben’s post for more details.
Paid courses and ebooks can be a great gift to give to someone who wants to advance their CS career. The holiday season is the perfect time to look for discounts on your favorite programming resources. Get a head start on your next project with these courses provided by DEV Community members!
@kevinpowell teamed up with Scrimba to create the Responsive Web Design Bootcamp. With 173 lessons and over 15 hours of content, you are sure to have a responsive website up and running by the end. Check out Kevin's post for more information on how Scrimba makes learning easier.
These next posts were posted by our community members on DEV Listings. While there are free courses and ebooks online that can get you started with the foundations of programming, paid materials are often able to look more in depth on topics such as web dev, AWS, and cloud computing.
I hope some of these resources were helpful to you! Keep an eye out for our Last Minute Shopping guide, coming soon. Feel free to leave your gift suggestions in the comments below!
If you were looking to advertise your product, course, or job listing, feel free to check out DEV Listings for more info.
Top comments (2)
Brian, these suggestions are great! Thanks for putting this list together. Three digital gift ideas for devs that I'd like to share:
This is great since I start my first year in the field. Going to take a look at these resources over the next couple of days.